This review is more focused on Heretic since I don't like open ended levels like Hexen's. I almost like Heretic, its an awesome looking game and sounding, but the bullet sponge enemies were such a slog. Even with the enhanced weapon balance turned on in this port, they're still too spongy.
It's really insane we need to go to games made in 2010 or older to get great writing, deeply interesting characters, great factions, great dialogue, amazing world building, and impactful choices in RPGs. Modern video games are pathetic.
Grew up with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, which I liked a lot, but it was filled with as many bad levels as there were great levels. Finally played Return to Castle Wolfenstein way way later, and RTCW is basically just "what if MOHAA was excellent 90% of the time instead of ~33% of the time?" -the game. On top of that, the guns feel more fun to use than MOHAA's, and RTCW has secret hunting that rewards and incentivizes exploration and re-playthroughs. Also character movement feels smoother in RTCW, and kicking doors open feels fun (and is faster than opening by hand). RTCW is a top 5 FPS game of all time IMO.
Got into boomer shooters a year ago, I've played maybe 25 or so since then, and I'd say Doom 64 is my favorite one. I never played a Doom game before (besides 2016), but now in my 30s I'm finally delving into these games. I strongly recommend this one. Good arsenal of fun weapons, level design is excellent, secret hunting is addictive, and it's extremely immersive and atmospheric. Plus once you beat the vanilla game, you can get Doom 64 Complete Edition, which includes all the custom maps made by the community taken from a few different PC ports from the last 20 or so years. It essentially doubles the size of the base game, while also improving other things, plus it's very customizable.
For the past year I've been getting into old PC shooters I never played before as a Nintendo/Sega kid in the 90s. For anyone else looking into these old games, this game is a great starting point. For new players I'd almost say its mandatory you get The Force Engine source port. It essentially a mod that makes the game run in 1440p (or 1080p, or 4k), adds true mouse controls and fixes the controls to feel smooth and modern. And it's free. While the level design can get a little obtuse compared to Doom 1/2/64, Dark Forces is still probably one of my top 5 old PC shooters of the 25 or so I've played in the last year. I read the patch notes and saw that there are even a few subtle minor map tweaks the Force Engine port added to make certain things less confusing, so I only had to look up what to do a couple times on YouTube. There's tons of fan made maps too, lots of content in this purchase.
Been on a boomer shooter kick the last several months and eventually got to playing this one. This game however was the only one I hated to play compared to other shooters from the 90s and early 2000s. Credit where it's due, the guns in this game feel amazing. The gibbing technology is really advanced for the time and never has a shotgun, a Desert Eagle, or a MG felt so powerful. The first few levels are solid and enjoyable because of the gunplay, and since the monotony of the level design and the rest of the game hadn't really sunken in yet, so it was pretty good for a short time. Beyond that, I finally started to notice how extremely linear, uninteresting, monotonous, and repetitive the levels are. The level design is just running down a track, shooting and killing several hundred very uninteresting and dumb enemies once they pop up in front of you for 7 hours straight, fight the last bulletsponge boss with no real feedback given to tell if you're actually killing him or not until he finally falls over, and then you're done. The extremely good gunplay just isn't enough to make the full run-time fun for me. Seems like well over half of people do like this game though, so if its on sale, try it out since it since the game gets really cheap on sale.
